Are Drum Scans of your 35mm Film Worth It?
DRUM SCANS
When scanning your film, it’s natural to want the best results possible out of your scanner. It’s usually the cost that limits us from getting the best possible scan out of our negative. Many of us DIY film photographers have resorted to cobbling together some kind of makeshift copy stand to use that old digital camera we have lying around to “scan” our negatives. With lab prices exceeding $20 to develop and scan a roll of 35mm film, there has been dollars to save putting that old digital camera to use.
What about on the opposite end of that spectrum? No, not the “high quality” lab scan. And that’s not dismissing what the high end film labs send. But this is waaaaaaaaaay beyond film labs. I’m talking about drum scanning. What’s a drum scan? Let’s go straight to the source of this post, Alex Burke: What is Drum Scanning?
I use theFINDlab for all of my color developing and scanning, always ordering the Large (12”) sized scans on the Nortisu HS-1800, and I love the results I get. For a 35mm negative, I typically get a file in the 12-15 MB range. The lab knows I want to save my highlights with giving me as much shadow detail as possible, and I usually get just that: as much as possible.
A drum scan goes further, especially in detail. A 35mm scan comes in north of 600 MB! It also comes with a price of $30 a negative! That’s steep, so is it worth it? Well, let’s compare: lab scan vs. drum scan.
I reached out to film photography guru Alex Burke to put his services to the test. Alex is well known for his film acumen, his large format landscape photography, and a master of his craft from light to pixels. And his drum scan and negative-to-positive inversion in photoshop did not disappoint. The photo I wanted scanned was one I had taken back in March of 2021. It’s one that I have grown to love with the light and shadows covering this circuitous path to the old Pea Island Life Saving Station in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
LAB SCAN VS. DRUM SCAN
I’ve received a couple requests for prints of this frame ranging up to 16” x 20”. That’s a massive print where the starting point is only a large-sized scan of a 35mm frame of Kodak Portra 400. From a side-by-side, I bet you rarely see the difference, but blow it up and you really start to see where a drum scan shines.
This is the crop that immediately caught my eye when I started playing with the drum scan. I could immediately see the better shadow detail in the front of the building. It also had a much finer gradient between the colors, and my highlight details were much better towards the horizon in the drum scan. My lab scan now appears to have more of an over-sharpened look, which is certainly the result of the smaller file size and the detail at that pixel level.
Cropping in even further, the over sharpening becomes even more apparent in the lab scan, whereas the drum scan has such great tonal range. Even with large prints, as people look closer, it’s important that the details don’t negatively impact the print due to artifacts from the scanning.
So, what do you think? Is $30 for this single scan worth it? If I can quickly earn that back with a sale, then most definitely. And I rarely stop at “good enough” when it comes to something that will represent me. Nothing but my best.
A big thank you to Alex Burke for the amazing service and turnaround.
